A Documentarian on the Move

Jeanpaul Isaacs, right, chosen to appear at the Oscars for the promise of a nascent film career, recently went to Zambia to make a documentary about the work of James E. Simon, left, a professor in the Department of Plant Biology and Pathology at the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences.

Photography:

Nick Romanenko

Jeanpaul Isaacs, a student at the Rutgers Center for Digital Filmmaking (RCDF) before graduating this month, was at the center of things during the Academy Awards on March 2. As a member of Team Oscar, consisting of six student filmmakers selected through a nationwide competition sponsored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Isaacs SAS’14, SC&I’14 helped hand out Oscar statuettes to the celebrities who were presenting them to the winners.

“It was exciting and surreal,” says Isaacs, one of six siblings raised by their mother in South Brunswick, New Jersey. “Being under the same roof as the most talented and creative people in the film industry was inspiring. One of the most amazing moments of my life was when they applauded Team Oscar during the broadcast. Hard work, passion, and grit got me to that stage, and I hope to continue working to one day have someone present me with an Oscar.”

That’s conceivable. Isaacs won the award for best picture at the Campus MovieFest 2013, a worldwide student film festival, for his short film The Youth, which was presented at the Cannes Film Festival this spring, one of eight films he produced in 18 months. In April, Isaacs went to Zambia to make a documentary about James E. Simon, a professor in the Department of Plant Biology and Pathology at the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences (SEBS), who is helping women find the means to economic independence. The opportunity to make the film, arranged through a Rutgers Film Bureau/SEBS partnership, was part of his course requirement for an advanced documentary class taught by Dena Seidel, who is also the director of RCDF, which is part of the Mason Gross School of the Arts in New Brunswick.